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Open standards software and NASA's next generation space telescope

Sky Matthews, a senior software engineer, and Swati Moran, a marketing manager, both from IBM Rational, talk about open standards system development with the James Webb space telescope project.

An IBM press release on the subject states, "Because separate space agencies from several different countries around the world are developing the software that will operate the Telescope’s Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) systems, Command and Data Handling (CNDH), and the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) that houses the four primary instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope, it was critical for NASA to weave a common thread throughout the project that would circumvent expensive and time consuming software issues." It continues, "To address this hurdle, NASA mandated that each agency develop their systems using open standards-based software from IBM. The software, called IBM Rational Rose Real-time, is a UML-based visual modeling development software that acts as a blue print for the entire multi-decade project, allowing the developers of the various Telescope systems to “drag and drop” software code directly into the blue print where it is then automatically available across the entire project."